Terry Smith joined AAAM in 1994. He reflects on what inspired him to be a part of the AAAM family, “My first ‘boss’ was Dr. Jim Newman of Biokinetics and Associates and Jim has always been a huge supporter of AAAM and all the things that it stands for. He was probably the inspiration for me to join and publish for AAAM. The first conference that I attended was in 1992 in Portland, Oregon. I was asked to present a paper that Harry Hurt and Dave Thom had written and it was a fantastic experience.” He continues, “I met a lot of the people that had written papers that I considered to be landmark research in our field. It was fantastic as a young biomechanist to meet and talk with people like Tom Gennarelli, John States, Jane Stutts, Don Huelke, Sue Baker, Harry Smith, and Ayub Ommaya about my research.”

Terry’s experience with AAAM has afforded him, “the ability and opportunity to network with other people doing similar work. We live in a time where there are limited resources available to address many of these issues of road safety, so we need to spend money wisely and in a manner that provides the most benefit. Through AAAM, I have met so many other researchers and I know that without hesitation, I could contact almost any one of them with a question and within a short period of time, they will get back to me with their thoughts and suggestions. Oftentimes, I am contacting someone else that is doing the exact same thing as I am – only on the other side of the world! That’s how we all work together towards a common goal of reducing the frequency and severity of injuries due to road traffic crashes.”

Something that other people may not know about AAAM is that this organization “represents this unique bridge between medicine, public health and automotive engineering which doesn’t exist in any other organization that I know of. Our organization includes a unique group of people that want to know the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of automotive injury along with a group of engineers and scientists that want to develop countermeasures to try to reduce the severity and frequency of all those injuries. Everyone is working towards the same common goal of safer roads and everyone has something to contribute. AAAM is a true multi-disciplinary organization.”

As a member of AAAM, Terry has experienced some great moments with the organization. “Well, I just won a $100 Amazon gift certificate so that is quite nice – thanks! But seriously, I think my favorite moments are when AAAM honors those members that blazed the trail for all of us that are currently in this field. I’m one of those old guys that grew up riding my bike without a helmet and remembers jumping and rolling around in the back seat of the family car while mom and dad rode unrestrained in the front seat. Some of our younger members probably can’t even fathom the idea of driving in a car without a child car seat or a seat belt … but without some of those early road safety pioneers who wanted to make a difference we would probably all still be riding around without a bicycle helmet and bouncing around the backseat — and road traffic fatalities would be huge! It is important for us to recognize the contributions that those early AAAM members made to both our organization as well as to road safety in general.”

Terry has a fun hobby, he has a collection of 25 motorcycles — one is a Honda Nighthawk 750 that was owned by both Harry Hurt and David Thom. The rest of them are 1:12 scale so they fit nicely on the top of his bookshelf.

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